What we do is look for high standards of excellence in the arts.
Now, I cannot approve anything the council has rejected, but I can reject anything the council has approved.
No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody.
Most of our funding goes to organizations and is then used to leverage the private sector.
It would be difficult, in this day and age, to fund art that made racial slurs.
I knew as well as anybody what the endowment does for artists because I had been someone it had supported through not-for-profit theater.
I began to think, The endowment has had a bad reputation in the last few years, and that's unfair.
I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.
Well, in the 1990 reauthorization legislation, there was a phrase that said we do not fund obscenity as defined by a court of law.
If a panel feels that a grant is worthy and they know the content of the work of art in question, we at the endowment will be prepared to defend it.
Senator Helms might very well do that. I would point out to him that we in the art world are not necessarily in the business of making controversial art.
All I want to do is make sure that art is available to all Americans in a participatory way, whether you engage in the art process yourself or you're an audience member.
Picture Quotes to Inspire and Delight